What's the difference between liveness and readiness probes?

Summary

Readiness says whether an instance should receive traffic (dependencies ready, warmed up); failing removes it from load balancing without restarting. Liveness says whether the process is stuck; failing restarts the container. Startup probes give slow-starting apps time before liveness begins.

Longer Answer

Don't make liveness depend on external services (a database outage would restart every pod and worsen the incident).

Key Points

• Readiness: receive traffic?
• Liveness: restart?
• Startup probe for slow boots
• Keep liveness local